A picture is worth a thousand words. Exploring how images can enhance our messages.

I got sent a link to a great infographic: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/digital-classroom. It’s a visual representation of the battle between e-books and real books, using icons, clever layout and simple, pithy text to get it’s point across. It engaged me, captured my imagination and taught me something. All in all, that’s pretty good going.

Infographics are visual representations of data or knowledge that, when done well, make it easier to consume. They tend to present a narrative through the data, an overlay of a story. Not only can they make the messages clearer, they tend to look good too. But only if they are done well!

There is no doubt that we are seeing a shift towards more audio visual media for the consumption of learning. Infographics sit nicely within this mix. It’s certainly more friendly to view one on an iPad than it is to wade through a page of text, although good presentation can’t make up for poor analysis or data collection to begin with. Just making things look nice doesn’t make them right.

Despite any reservations about the validity of underlying data, and how they are built, it’s worth looking for some good examples of where infographics have been used, almost worth building a scrapbook of the ones that we like.

It’s a comparatively quick, cheap and flexible addition to our armoury of presentational techniques. It can make learning feel easy and much more alive. I suppose you can argue that an infographic isn’t really a picture, as they tend to have a lot of words too, so whilst a picture may be worth a thousand words, an infographic may only be worth 500, but it’s a start.

The simple messages at the heart of learning. The benefits of avoiding complexity.

Good ideas can easily become bad ones. Simple messages easily get waterlogged by complexity. Our role in the design and delivery of learning solutions is partly to inject enough energy and momentum to get a project moving, and partly to wield the pruning shears and keep the focus clear and simple. It’s the role of a Director and the role of an Editor, all rolled into one.

We learn in stories, sharing ideas, narratives and frames of reference. These stories are often incremental, building on foundations and working towards more complex pictures. The question is: how much complexity do we build in along the way?

Lets call the things that make stories complex ‘confounding narratives’.

We know what story we want to tell, we have it all mapped out, but when the time comes to tell it, confounding narratives creep in. They are sub plots, twists and turns, in a Bond film, they would be the unexpected trip to Monte Carlo. They are created and driven by other agendas and they make our story complex. But they may not be relevant to what we want to say.

Learning narratives often fall victim to confounding narratives. There is sometimes a desire to try and cram lots of additional information into a solution. It’s like we open up the floodgates.

I think that often this is because there aren’t all that many effective open channels of communication to use, and once we establish one for one purpose, other messages try to use it, but the overall effect is one of increased complexity and decreased clarity. It can be well intentioned, but ultimately counter productive.

Our task is to work through the story, developing it, but maintaining an ability to keep it clear and simple. Part of this can be achieved by constantly reviewing back against our core objectives. Simply reading out what we are writing can help here, as can effective storyboarding.

For example, many projects take place against a background of change. There is no need for us to revisit the reasons for that change within every story. It’s already there, it’s been covered before. Trying to use every channel of communication to strengthen the change message can be counter productive: it’s like the adverts in a tv show, you just turn off if you see it too many times.

Stories benefit from simplicity and clarity. Keeping it simple may not always be easy, but it’s always worth the effort.

Spelling, and grammar. Why it’s increasingly hard to get away with it.

People worry that spelling and grammar are going out of the window. In a world of txt speak, in a world where ‘ask’ mysteriously becomes ‘aks’ (or ax?), in a world where even my middle class, podiatrist friend accidentally called me ‘blood’ in a moment of bonding, it’s easy to worry that nobody cares.

But they do.

It used to be true that Microsoft was the arbiter of truth, with it’s infamous squiggly green and red lines telling us when we had deviated from accepted (American) English. Whilst computers may be driving us towards abbreviation and foreshortening, they can be our saviour too. There are a number of new Apps that focus on grammar, like ‘iGE: the interactive grammar of English from UCL’. Whilst it will win no prizes for it’s title, it is a great tool for learning and practicing your grammar.

But a new force is also at work. Some time ago, i wrote an article about the importance of spelling. The title of the article was ‘The Improtance of Spelling’. It was a joke that i found funny at the time, but it wore thin. First, the iPad insisted on correcting it at every opportunity, but then, worse, my father left a comment. With a wilful glee at the failure of my entire education, he announced to the world that i’d got it wrong.

Naturally, whilst i can weather the opprobrium of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, when my spelling goes amiss in the cause of humour, this was one step too far, and I did the honourable thing and deleted his comment.

But now it gets worse. Yesterday i talked about ‘practice’. Or maybe ‘practise’. I forget. In fact, i never knew. Yes, there are two words, but i’m damned if i know which one to use when.

But not my mother. No, to her the failing is clear, clear enough to send me a text in the wee small hours of the night identifying the error of my ways. Clear enough to indicate her maternal disproval at the mangling of the English language. THIS is what happens when you empower the silver surfer. My parents now have more iPads than me and are wielding them to deadly effect. I should count myself lucky that my mother hasn’t figured out how to leave comments yet.

I thought the point of technology was to disenfranchise people over thirty? But no, now not only can my mother remind me that i’ve forgotten my brother’s birthday by text, email or Facetime, she can correct my typographical inexactitudes and frustrate my attempts to discombobulate the new world order in short order. The barriers of spelling and grammar are not dropping, they are higher and more public than ever!

Choosing the right paint: the right kit for the job.

I bought myself some new watercolours this weekend. Winsor and Newton artists range, a lovely enamelled steel box with thirty different half pans. It’s a larger version of the set i got when i was sixteen, which has accompanied me on many miles of walks and expeditions over the years. That set, the older and much loved one, has eighteen half pans and a few dents and chips. So, by my reckoning, my painting will be about 50% better as a result.

It does work like that doesn’t it? More kit = better performance? I would love to think so, because, if nothing else, i am an aspirational shopper. Winsor and Newton do three ranges of colours: student, intermediate and artist. I’ve always bought the artist paints on the basis that (a) i’m a snob or (b) i buy into the fact that they are better. Well, they’re certainly more expensive, which surely amounts to about the same thing?

To get good at anything, you need to practice, so you could argue that it’s worth practicing with cheap paints until you get good enough to make the most of the good ones. There is probably a truth in this: you see it when children learn to play guitar on a cheap imported, third hand model and then graduate up to a Martin when they are actually good. Although there is a truth to the opposite as well: that if you give people a good guitar, or use good paints, you find that you can play better from the start!

Many creative expressive arts have both technique and ‘feel’. The feel of my guitar is different from any other. I can play it with my eyes shut more easily. The same with paint really: sure, i can use any paints, but you do get a feel for how individual colours behave from different manufacturers. Yes, red is red, but they do move differently.

One of the joys of growing up is that you suddenly have time and money to lavish on your hobbies. Well, money anyway. Just witness the profusion of cyclists on £3,000 carbon fibre bikes, hauling their beer bellies up hills in luminous leggings. Proof positive that the right kit does not make you perform better, although it might make you feel better whilst you’re trying.

There is an emotionally satisfying state to having the right kit. It’s something we need to consider when people join an organisation, take part in a piece of training or just turn up to work. If you give people a clapped out old desk, a steam driven laptop and some dog eared motivational posters on the walls, they are going to feel decidedly second rate. They are unlikely to deliver an award winning performance.

So, the right kit won’t deliver excellence in it’s own right, but the wrong kit may hinder our ability to be excellent. Now there’s a conundrum.

I know that more paints, better brushes and a bigger tin box won’t make me a better painter. It might help me to get some different effects, but i doubt i could quantify the results. It may just make me feel good, more motivated, more energised to walk out into the cold wet outdoors to paint. And as motivation is a key part of success, maybe that’s enough. I guess only time will tell.

Reflections on mentoring: starting the relationship.

I’m starting a new mentoring relationship this week, providing support someone i’ve never met before through a global mentoring scheme. It puts people in the UK and US in touch with people in various developing countries to establish mentoring relationships. It’s a slightly daunting prospect, feeling some degree of responsibility for the success of the thing and worrying whether i’ll actually be able to add any value.

I know that mentoring is a two way process, that it’s not a case of the mentor teaching the mentee, but rather of providing structured conversations that enable the mentee to explore challenges themselves and providing support to those discussions. In a perfect relationship, both mentor and mentee will go through a process of discovery. I’ve done this a number of times before, but at the start of things, it’s always a time to be nervous.

Everyone benefits from a different perspective: indeed, it’s one of the first things i ask people these days, do they have a mentor? It’s not that i believe that there is anything magical about mentoring, i don’t believe that it’s going to lead to enlightenment, but i do think that it can help you with that most important of things: perspective.

We tend to allow the walls to close in around us, for out viewpoint to become narrow, framed by our immediate pressures and concerns, by our work environment and colleagues, by our home and social lives. Sometimes the opportunities to break out of this are limited, but mentoring, especially this type of global programme, can provide these opportunities.

It’s good to be able to reframe what’s important, to learn about other people’s narratives and challenges, to use this understanding to explore our own constraints and to see how narrow our own perspective has become.

So the start of a new mentoring relationship is a time for reflection on one’s perspective and for anticipating the learning ahead. Only time will tell how successful that will be for both of us.

Words about learning: Tea

Tea is my favourite drink. For preference, strong builders tea, although maybe Earl Grey in the morning. This week, i thought, it’s time for change. So i got some ‘silver tip white tea’ from the local aspirational deli/hippy market, made from the fresh buds of the tea tree, plucked within two hours of opening and wilted in the sun. It’s not bad, although i’m not sure that the result lives up to the rhetoric. Still, it’s good to try new things.

We fall into routines, some of which are comforting and sensible, others through lethargy or apathy. It’s good to try new things, break the routine, escape from the norm. You never know what you might find. You can always go back to the everyday builders brew.

A legacy of learning: building a history in pottery.

Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada founded the Leach pottery in 1920 (www.leachpottery.com). It’s probably one of the most well known and influential studio potteries in the world, outlasting both it’s founders and spawning a whole network of Leach trained and apprenticed potters. As legacies go, it’s not a bad one.

I’m interested from two perspectives: firstly, the way that a community of learning was created around the pottery and, secondly, in the way that the pots themselves tell a story. The narrative of form.

Apprenticeships have a long and illustrious history in the craft world, where it can take many years to master an activity. I guess that whilst many apprenticeships focus primarily on functional skills, in a school like this, there is a strong aesthetic imperative too. Leach had a strong focus on simple, utilitarian forms as a rebellion against more refined ‘fine art’ pots. His designs and technical approach are heavily influenced by Japanese art and have an earthy, rugged feel. From the start, the Leach pottery was a place to go to learn, indeed, Leach himself seems to have left a strong legacy of community, organising conferences and actively teaching and travelling widely. I guess he lived at a time when international borders were retreating and travel was easier, but he certainly facilitated the creation of an international community.

This was a community not founded around the needs of food production or shelter, but around art and imagery, around form and design. It was an ideal as much as a technology, although it was based on the technology of the kiln and glazing.

The output of this community was pots and ideas, both of which spread throughout the UK and the world. Many potters in this part of the world today would cite Leach as an influence and, although the original pottery has now slipped from being alive and independent into being ‘a museum’, there are still potters active today who trained under Leach. The transition to ‘attraction’ status, to a museum, rather moves the original location from actively creating to actively preserving. It ceases to be a place for innovation and becomes instead a place for conservation. Nonetheless, it’s tendrils still reach out.

The narrative of form is an interesting way to chart what was learnt by this living community. As with any expressive art, it’s interesting how it writes it’s own history, in clay, as it goes. You can literally line up the pots and see how ideas have developed, influenced and eclipsed their forebears. And with clay, you can literally connect, at one degree of separation, from the original artist. Each pot is a frozen moment of ideas, creativity, technology and design. Each fluid and expressive instance is held in place for eternity, or until it’s broken and finds it’s way into the ground for the archaeologists of the future to piece together.

It’s slightly odd exploring the legacy of Leach. It feels like a shadow of a once active community, now slightly frozen in time. But nevertheless, it’s fascinating to explore the legacy, to see how the ideas have been perpetuated, how they have made the transition from rebellion to mainstream, how people today are evolving and developing them further. I guess this is the ultimate legacy in art: to be subsumed into the inspiration of future generations.